Today I received an email from Blink inviting me to be a beta tester on the new feature whereby when motion is detected Alexa makes an audio announcement on all my echo devices. It works great when one of my three cameras is motion triggered, but not on the other two. What gives with that?

Not sure what you’re expecting? It’s in Beta and you’re the tester. That’s the whole point. You have to provide reports back to Blink about the functionality, issues you might have faced, and genuine all out bugs. On receipt of yours, and other reports, they will investigate, determine if anything needs correcting, and release new versions of firmware and software to you, and other Beta testers, to see if the issues are resolved. If and when they are, it will be released to the public, me for one, by which time, hopefully, it will work on all my cameras, because Blink, with the help of you, and others, have resolved all the problems.

I surprised they didn’t provide you with a mechanism by which you can report your findings, and also surprised that they didn’t ask you to keep it to yourself. When I Beta tested something for them, they did just that, and posting my findings in a public forum was not the mechanism they proposed to me, in order for that to be achieved.

Blink has a portal set up for Beta testing programs. I think it even states when you sign up to test something that you aren’t supposed to talk about it during (obviously) or even after testing as part of the non disclosure.

Makes sense. But there was nothing. Only a link to a SURVEY which said nothing about restricted sharing and only asked what devices I used it on. And I had to use a final “box” for optional comments to report my problem.
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I did report the issue on the support page of the general Blink site and got a quick response. But the suggestion only said to fiddle with motion sensitivity. Yet all my cameras are set for the same sensitivity, and DO trigger recording. It’s just that only one ANNOUNCES through Alexa.

Something has got lost in the process, somehow. Not sure who’s running this Beta with you, but if your mail didn’t give you specific protocols to follow, or even just a single point of contact to reply to by mail, then they have done a poor job of handling your involvement.

When I was invited, because the Beta portal was not yet available, still isn’t to UK users, my email was very clear in terms of what was expected of me.

I had a single point of contact, and my report was to be sent to this same representative, following a strict testing protocol, which was also issued by the same representative in the content of an email. The report allowed for inclusion of additional comments with regard to general observations, and thoughts, about how it might be improved.

On the test I was involved with, everything did function as they said, and I reported the same, but I also noted that it was not entirely intuitive, without a clear set of instructions, and I suggested a number of ways in which this could be improved. Not sure if any were acted upon, because I haven’t noticed the release yet.

If your mail was not handled in the same way, then I would suggest someone dropped the ball.

I can confirm what DrVJMJ said, there were only directions to enable and a link to a very basic survey this time, with only one free form box for comments. I have beta tested for Blink before and this one is definitely a quick and dirty version. Doesn’t even mention anything about not talking about it publicly, so I’m not surprised that anyone who has never beta tested before doesn’t realize they aren’t supposed to post about it. Or maybe Blink thinks that if someone “leaks” it, it will let people know that they are continuing to develop the product?

Thanks Carey. Nice to know it’s not just me. The good news is that the feature works on 1 camera! In addition to the announcement, I set a routine for Alexa to turn on appropriate lights. We’ll see if Blink has some answer for why the other cameras don’t announce.
Jim